Liberal Radio, R.I.P.

Liberal radio died in Cincinnati today at age 23 months.
With Jerry Springer calling it quits after Friday’s show, Clear Channel today announced it will kill off progressive talk from WSAI-AM (1360) on Monday in favor of tape-delayed advice shows. Goodbye Springer, Al Franken and Ed Schultz. Welcome back Dr. Laura.
Clear Channel launched "the revolution of talk radio" 23 months ago with Jerry Springer’s show. Well, the revolution is over. Springer is quitting radio to do movies, TV roles, a Bud Light commercial and other opportunities from his "Dancing with the Stars" popularity. He was down to only about two dozen stations, from a peak of 53, and had been dropped from Air America, which filed for bankruptcy in October.
With the format averaging only about 1% of the audience here, and liberal talk being a tough sale in a red state, I figured Clear Channel will try something else. I never guessed this hodgepodge of advice shows called "1360thesource.com."
Anchoring afternoon drive (4-7 pm) will be Atlanta consumer reporter Clark Howard (http://clarkhoward.com/). The same show will repeat the next morning (7-10 a.m.). Afternoons will be filled with one-hour reruns of old WKRC-AM shows by Gary Sullivan, Ron Wilson and Steve Overbeck.

The lineup:
5-7 a.m.: Wall Street Journal (live feed)
7-10 a.m.: Clark Howard (previous weekday afternoon show)
10 a.m.-1 p.m.: Dr. Laura Schlessinger (tape-delay)
1-2 p.m.: At Home with Gary Sullivan (old WKRC show)
2-3 p.m.: In The Garden with Ron Wilson (old WKRC show)
3-4 p.m.: Steve Overbeck’s Autoline (old WKRC show)
4-7 p.m.: Clark Howard (new show, taped 1-4 pm in Atlanta)
7-10 p.m.: Neal Boortz (tape-delay)
10 p.m.-1 a.m.: Dr. Joy Browne (tape-delay)
1-5 a.m.: Joey Reynolds (live from WOR in NY)
Rerun radio sounds pretty cheap to me, but Bender says programming costs for these syndicated shows are "pretty much the same" as the progressive talk shows. But they’ll be easier to sell by Clear Channel account reps who handle both WKRC-AM and WSAI-AM. And it gives Clear Channel a niche, up against talk on WLW, WKRC, WCKY, WDBZ, WCVX (formerly WTSJ) and new Supertalk96.5.
Like I said, this surprised me. What else could they have put on a weak AM station?